2008-2011: Both before and after passage of the law, various forms and variations of the swastikas have been used in fascist demonstrations (protected by law enforcement), the best known being the ‘Lithanian swastika’ (with added lines). More information and images here.

25 November 2010: Seven European ambassadors (Britain, Estonia, France, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden) include in their letter to Lithuania’s leaders the sentence: ‘A court in Klaipeda is able to declare it acceptable to display a swastika in public as a traditional Lithuanian symbol’ (BNS report here, DefendingHistory.com report here). Follow-up: On 13 December 2010, MP Denis MacShane asked in the House of Commons for the entire letter to be made public.

20 April 2011: To mark Hitler’s birthday, a series of swastikas and other fascist symbols were displayed in various locations. Most disturbingly, three swastika flags were left to hang for eight hours on Tauro Hill, overlooking central Vilnius, before being removed. Report on Delfi.lt. English summary and photos here.

8-10 July 2011: Over this weekend, there was a desecration of the two major monuments at the mass murder site Ponár (Paneriai), where over 70,000 Jews from Vilna and its region were murdered: the smaller one with a swastika and an inscription translating ‘Hitler was right’ and the larger monument with an obscene drawing and text (details here; full image here). Authorities rapidly cleaned up the damage and tried to cover up the incident. Timothy Snyder in the New York Review of Books blog noted that the cover-up resulted in a lost educational opportunity. The Wiesenthal Center’s press release is here.

3 October 2011: A ‘chief specialist’ at the state-sponsored Genocide Research Center who helped organize the neo-Nazi march (featuring numerous swastikas) last March 11, and who has published antisemitic interviews and documents since then, has not been disciplined or disemployed to date. Details here, here, here, and here. Most recently, the neo-Nazi organization he leads in his ‘spare time’ published an ‘Enemies List’ including an official advisor to the country’s small Jewish community. Original here, English translation here, summary here.

August-November 2011: The current issue of the independent Vilnius in Your Pocket lists the 19 May 2010 legalization of swastikas as one of the two historic events in Lithuania in that year, regarding it as ‘a sinister U-turn’ in the aftermath of the celebrations marking the twentieth anniversary of independence on March 11. See penultimate paragraph on p. 9, PDF here.

16 November 2011: Dissident political leader Algirdas Paleckis notes the legal status of swastikas in his comments at a conference held at the Tolerance Center in Vilnius. Video here.